I think that's right (also not an astronomer). I looked this up in the Hipparcos catalog [0][1] -- that's one that measures parallax distances to bright stars.

I think that's right (also not an astronomer). I looked this up in the Hipparcos catalog [0][1] -- that's one that measures parallax distances to bright stars. It's supposed to be complete to at least +7.3 magnitude [0]. Cutting off at +6.5 magnitude [2] (the faintest visible stars according to [3]), Hipparcos reports * 7,943 visible stars * 1,078 (14%) beyond 1,000 light years; * 34 beyond 10,000 l.y. (these must be supergiants!) If I calculated right, a +6.5 magnitude star would demand an absolute magnitude of -0.9 at 1,000 light years, and -5.9 at 10,000 light years. Looking this up on the Hertzsprung–Russell chart [4], this would include only very bright giants, and supergiants, respectively. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparcos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparcos [1] ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/I/311/ (hip2.dat.gz for data; intro.pdf for field descriptions) [2] Hp magnitude is a 340-850 nm visible band, which diverges slightly from V band magnitude, http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-catalog/hic.html http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-catalog/hic.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude#Table_of_notable_celestial_objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude#Table_of_no... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_di...